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by hintymad 12 days ago
I wonder how Chinese companies can make their models so much cheaper than the US companies. I'm not sure government subsidies are the answer. Subsidizing a single company with a few billion dollars, maybe. Subsidizing at least three companies with 10s of billions of dollars annually? Do we have proof of that? I assume we can't pin it on the lower cost of engineers in China, either. The top engineers are not that cheaper, and isn't engineering cost a small fraction of the cost of the model companies? Besides, if engineering cost is the driving force, can we really say that the US companies have a technical edge?
2 comments
elictronic 12 days ago
Why wouldn't they? They subsidized their EV industry with 230 billion dollars over the last 14 years. Solar was before that with about 17 billion.

The US puts about 0.4% of GDP towards various subsidies, China is around 4%. This isn't about cost of engineering, it's money thrown at industries directly to boost them. The us provides tax incentives. China just gives you subsidized loans to the businesses they choose to dominate.

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asadotzler 12 days ago
The US subsidized its EV industry with about $120B over the last 15 years, and that's what they gave out despite congress expecting $300B in their reporting just a few years ago. So, it's not like China threw hundreds of billions at EVs while the US left it all to GM and Ford to solve.
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elictronic 12 days ago
I would love to see the reference you have for those numbers. Money approved is not money spent. Especially when those subsidies have been killed.

You might want to glance and see which one of the subsidies your looking at are even still in place and not projections. Most have been canceled for years now.

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pessimizer 12 days ago
> The US subsidized its EV industry with about $120B over the last 15 years

Not with loans to scrappy startups, but with subsidies to buyers that were just pocketed as margin by oligarchs.

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asdfman123 12 days ago
Because that's the only way they win right now.

In the US, why make a scrappy small model when a big tech company will pay you a stupid salary for working on their big one?

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